Time for H.P. Lovecraft

Yesterday's silly socks antics made me forget that it was H.P. Lovecraft's birthday! I was reminded of it by this fascinating article in The Atlantic, which popped up on my Facebook page. Social medias have their good sides. Anyway, it reminded me of these many afternoons I played Call of Cthulhu with my brothers and my friends. And that Halloween is not so far away and I should read a bit of Lovecraft in the weeks leading to it. It would only make sense. That said, the article above also shows that the heritage of Lovecraft is also dark in a rather unsavory way: he was racist, xenophobic, antisemitic and extremely so. He despised Blacks, Italians, Chinese, Irishmen and French Canadians (and I happen to be one of the latter). So however admirable and influential he was a master of horror, however creative he was, however essential he was to truly modernize the genre... He was a rather small man, I am sad to say. So I have to reconcile this with the fact that I love his work, or rather to accept that the writer of such great horror stories had horrible ideas. I will still read him in the weeks coming to Halloween.